It's hard work being an evil genius bent on world domination. There's just so much to do. Where do you go for electrified armchairs, or hundred metre tall underground rocket silos ? Where do you get a huge tank of ravenous carnivourous fish that won't eat one another? Some days it's so depressing you just want to give up.
But there is hope. Set up a contracting company to proivide a "one stop shop" for the wannabe Ernst Stavro Blofelds or Penguins. The company would have a fully trained and equipped staff of architects, lawyers, engineers and technicians, ready to help the Evil Genius to turn their dreams into reality.
The company would develop special expertise in the following areas -
Law- * Planning permission issues related to Vast Secret Underground laboratories * Change of Use applications for abandoned cold war bunkers, derelict castles, and supposedly collapsed mines. * Effluent management and enviromental protection complaince for nuclear, chemical and biological wepons manufacturing facilities.
Architecture- * Vast underground caverns * Modified volcanoes * Secret tunnels * Air conditioning ducts, only just big enough for the Superhero's love interest to squeeze though when stripped to her undies. *Conveniently sized drains or utility conduits for Superheros to enter through and Supervillians subsequent escape. * Secondary exhaust port just below the main port, ray shielded but still vulnerable to proton torpedoes (Option on Gigantic space-going battle stations only)
Engineering - * Lots of threatening looking pipework that oooze wisps of steam in a sinsiter way. * Huge banks of 1960s-looking computer equipment, lavishly equipped with unconvincing randomly flashing lights, designed to explode spectacularly when hit by a single bullet from a small calibre handgun. *Non-redundant and non-fault-tolerant power systems, launch control systems, reactor controlers and force fields. *Incredibly advanced and lethal wepons of mass destruction that have a small but critical weakness in a non-obvious place (See previous re exhaust ports).
Personnel- *Psychological screening of potential Evil Henchmen for neccessary character flaws, i.e. stupidity and inattentiveness, or a tendency to separate and attack the hero one at a time (junior grades), a tendency to turn out to be a good guy after all and act in a self-sacrificing way, or fall in love with the Hero's love interest (senior grades).
Nothing that the company does would actually be illegal (it would be left to the Evil Genius and his Henchmen to actually steal or make the nuclear bomb, deadly virus or particle beam weapon of their choice) and would make lavish donations to charaites and deserving causes, as well as paying all taxes.-- 8th of 7, Jun 21 2002 Evil Overlords start here .. http://www.eviloverlord.com/Think before you act. [8th of 7, Jun 21 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] "So You've Decided to be Evil" http://www.darksite...s/horror/evilguide/"A Step-by-Step Guide to joining the Forces of Darkness." [waugsqueke, Jun 21 2002] Villain Supply http://www.villainsupply.comKinda like this? [bookworm, Jun 22 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Grayhound Chronicles http://www.unitedheroes.net/grayhound/And the DeVry School for Evil Geniuses [Dog Ed, Jun 25 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] It already exists http://www.cia.govEvil genius incubator. Only interested parties need apply. [anonymous_coward, Oct 04 2004] Blackwater http://www.blackwaterusa.com/Getting worryingly close to baking this idea. [DrBob, Oct 06 2007] UnaBubba: No, we don't do that stuff here. You need the Evil Genius Supplies and Sundries Company. They're on the industrial park across town, and they do Trade accounts. The're in Yellow Pages. We only do major infrastructure projects here - like we provide the giant fishtank with the polished stainess steel gantry with the slightly-too-low safety rails, but we only specify the carnivorous fish. They're a consumable.
We could do the cleats, though.-- 8th of 7, Jun 21 2002 somebody is taking the Austin Powers movies too seriously....you forgot to include how to clone a MiniMe....-- runforrestrun, Jun 21 2002 Runforrestrun: Jeez, how many times .... we just do the civil and mechanical engineering, OK ? Well, maybe a bit of interior decorating too. If you want biotech you'll need to talk to someone else. Try the We Do Evil Things For Money And No Questions Asked Corporation, c/o Department of Trade, Whitehall, London. They should be able to help.-- 8th of 7, Jun 21 2002 UnaBubba: Yep. That's about right.
<administers kick to self for not thinking of that one>-- 8th of 7, Jun 21 2002 I'd like to order a space station with missile launchers, a block of cheese and a key for a mouse cage. Please send to acme labs Brain-- loke, Jun 21 2002 Bookworm: Love the site ....
UnaBubba: Many thanks. We shall be opening for business shortly. We've already booked the advertising airtime on Al-Jazeera ...-- 8th of 7, Jun 24 2002 I'm voting for this because I'm impressed to see that there exists a category called public:evil.
Without the Dark Side, how shall we ever know the light?
The legalities of this idea will be problematic, but if you conceal the evidence inside a Secret Lair buried deep inside a mountain, there shan't be any detection of naughtiness. It sounds like an evil combination of a standard fencing operation and James Bond.
"Would you like Spies with that?"-- polartomato, Jun 24 2002 I'd like to submit a proposal to have my organization listed as a Deserving Cause in the EGCC Charity list. I can provide documentation and tax records proving that we are in fact needy, deserving, and evil.
You don't know the name of my not-for-profit organization, but like 3M, we are everywhere. We don't teach the playground bully how to beat the crap out of people; we work with her mother to artfully release the child from responsibility for her actions. We don't pay the mobster to dispose of the body; we make the acid that burns the fingerprints from the body's disembodied hands. We don't commission Al-Quaeda's terrorist training camps, build giant gas-guzzling SUV's, or vote Republican; we make the terrorists' funds less visible, the diesel products more noxious, and the Democatic opposition more harmless.
We don't make a lot of the evil things you see every day; we make a lot of evil things worse.-- 1percent, Jun 24 2002 As you may know, I've had a fair number of mad ideas over the years, but you may not know that I'm really more interested in having a good time than in conquering/ruling whatever. Like, it'd be really cool to have my own personal genine flying saucer. Now note that if such a thing existed, its Operating Principles could potentially be misused, just like most other things. But what I would mainly want to do with it is commute somewhere above the traffic jams, and do some unusual sightseeing (like, is the Face On Mars really an eroded hill, or did NASA doctor the images?).
Anyway, the thing I wanted to post here, that may be somewhat relevant, concerns an idea I had a while back, a kind of "morality tale". I never wrote it down, partly because the story would have required permission and likely messy royalty payments to D.C. Comics. The story starts out with Our Hero figuring out a way to become a Super Hero. Just about the time he is ready to Do Good in a Big Way, a transdimensional warp opens up and bad old Lex Luthor arrives, looking for new worlds to conquer. Well, there's lots of room for Super Conflict, and the two foes battle to a standoff (perhaps the best that could be expected, considering unpracticed Hero versus experienced Villain), at which point Superman arrives, having finally tracked Luthor down, and breaks the deadlock. Luthor is hauled back where he belongs, and the moral of the tale is something like this:
"The world has enough ordinary Good and Evil battling in it already, without bumping it to the next level. Creating Super Good implies that Super Evil will be attracted, for the sake of balance. Unfortunately for the world in this tale, this particular Pandora's Box has been opened, and Our Hero is about to live a life that will lead to wondering if starting down that path was such a Super Good Idea, after all."
HOPEFULLY, there is enough truth in that "moral" that if you go about promoting Super Evil, then sufficient Super Good will actually arrive to combat it. But -- think carefully, now!!! -- do you REALLY want to go down that path?-- Vernon, Jun 25 2002 UnaBubba, actually its more like refusing to allow anti-bacterial cleaning products in your home, because they promote bacterial evolution to types worse than what we have to deal with now. The ordinary type of cleaning is still matched with ordinary kinds of dirt and bacteria.-- Vernon, Jun 25 2002 The DeVry School for Evil Geniuses is an integral part of the Grayhound Chronicles (e-fiction). There's your customer base, readymade. See link.-- Dog Ed, Jun 25 2002 With the lame attempts at world domination of today's Hollywood bad guys, I see a market for an Evil Genius Consulting Firm to more accurately reflect the personna and ideals of the true evil genius. These guys have an image problem to overcome.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 05 2002 Perhaps a University somewhere (Baghdad ?) should be offering a postgraduate course (MSc ?) in Being an Evil Genius for Fun and Profit ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 06 2002 [eighth] love the inea, have a croissant.
[Vernon] there are already, I'm afraid, many comics/graphic novels that deal with the idea that superheros begat supervillans. I would point you primarily at the seminal epic 'Watchmen' (which is just incredible) created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and 'Kingdom Come' by Elliot S. Maggin (which deals with what happens in the future of the DC universe with a proliferation of 'heros' who don't really know what it is to be heroic and end up endangering normal citizens in running turf battles and violent vigilantism). Furthermore, I'm sure that at some point in the tradional Batman books, the caped crusader is captured and put on trial by the inmates in Arkham Asylum on a carge that his existance forced their creation...-- Zircon, Nov 06 2002 Thanks, Zircon. So, do we physics-minded types now start talking about a Law of Conservation of Ethics? :)-- Vernon, Aug 26 2003 NYU has a school of individualized study (basically, make up your own major). Rumor has it that a kid actually majored in evil there a few years back.-- FakeGreenDress, Jan 11 2004 8th may be many things but *cute* aint one of them!-- po, Jan 11 2004 I'd like to buy some evil bunnies, kittens, and canaries, please.-- HalfBaker, Oct 03 2007 +-- evilpenguin, Oct 05 2007 random, halfbakery